The recent thread about how to get an earlier start to agriculture led me to start thinking about the continents that historically got left behind in the development of civilization--Australia and America.
Australia failed to start any major civilizations at all, probably due to lack of a good starter crop as Jared has covered in his excellent LoRaG. Without one relatively easy to domesticate species, no culture was able to invent agriculture and achieve the high population densities needed for large cities. But Australia is not what I am interested in, and Jared has covered that pretty well.
Instead, I am interested in America. It had a significant, agricultural population with many major cities and polities just prior to Columbus. The combined continents also have significant natural resources available for a sufficiently developed economy, though many of these would be difficult or impossible to reach for pre-industrialized states. Still, the resources that were available, especially forests and fertile land, rivaled anything available on other continents. Many of the inhabitants were reasonably technologically and scientifically sophisticated, keeping, for instance, detailed records of the sky and stellar movements. Still, a relative lack of suitable species for domestication, particularly those serving in a transport or labor role (what in Eurasia was filled by oxen, horses, etc.) combined with the late settlement of America and of course a lack of resistance to Eurasian diseases meant that America ended up being dominated by Eurasia, specifically Europe.
So, what could change this around a bit? Say, make America roughly equivalent in technology to Europe by 1500, without retarding European development? Biological PoDs (like, say, horses not going extinct in America) are allowed, and a butterfly net around America may be assumed; unless the change is something quite large, like a volcanic eruption or meteor impact, there will be minimal effects on the rest of the world.
Australia failed to start any major civilizations at all, probably due to lack of a good starter crop as Jared has covered in his excellent LoRaG. Without one relatively easy to domesticate species, no culture was able to invent agriculture and achieve the high population densities needed for large cities. But Australia is not what I am interested in, and Jared has covered that pretty well.
Instead, I am interested in America. It had a significant, agricultural population with many major cities and polities just prior to Columbus. The combined continents also have significant natural resources available for a sufficiently developed economy, though many of these would be difficult or impossible to reach for pre-industrialized states. Still, the resources that were available, especially forests and fertile land, rivaled anything available on other continents. Many of the inhabitants were reasonably technologically and scientifically sophisticated, keeping, for instance, detailed records of the sky and stellar movements. Still, a relative lack of suitable species for domestication, particularly those serving in a transport or labor role (what in Eurasia was filled by oxen, horses, etc.) combined with the late settlement of America and of course a lack of resistance to Eurasian diseases meant that America ended up being dominated by Eurasia, specifically Europe.
So, what could change this around a bit? Say, make America roughly equivalent in technology to Europe by 1500, without retarding European development? Biological PoDs (like, say, horses not going extinct in America) are allowed, and a butterfly net around America may be assumed; unless the change is something quite large, like a volcanic eruption or meteor impact, there will be minimal effects on the rest of the world.
